Matt Warman debates involving the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities during the 2019 Parliament

Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Warman Excerpts
Monday 21st November 2022

(1 year, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Michael Gove Portrait Michael Gove
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The autumn statement was at a time of challenging news for the global economy. It was absolutely the right response and, again, not only did we secure a significant, record increase in funding for local government at the previous spending review, but we, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) pointed out, secured billions additionally for adult social care and for children’s services. Once more, local government is securing the funding it needs under a Conservative Government who are putting stability and growth first.

Matt Warman Portrait Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
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6. What steps he is taking to support mixed-use developments.

Lucy Frazer Portrait The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lucy Frazer)
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We cannot have houses without services and infrastructure. The national planning policy framework recognises the need for mixed-use developments, including local facilities and transport networks. In addition, the national design guide and national model design recognise the importance of mixed-use development in creating sustainable, active and vibrant places.

Matt Warman Portrait Matt Warman
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The Skegness Gateway project is a 1,000-home development, but it is also home—thanks to the levelling-up fund—to a new college for Skegness and, if all goes well, it could be a significant boon to local NHS services. Will the Minister join me in welcoming the huge contribution of the Sanderson family, some of whom are in the Gallery? Will she also join me in welcoming the prospect of Departments working together, breaking down the silos to deliver the maximum possible potential for such projects all in one hit and at the first opportunity?

Lucy Frazer Portrait Lucy Frazer
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I echo my hon. Friend’s praise of the Sanderson family and their commitment to the local area, and I welcome them to the House of Commons today. I am delighted that Government funds are helping Skegness thrive. I know that officials in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and other Departments continue to work closely with local partners to ensure that, as the Skegness town deal programme enters its important next phase, the vision for the new local college that he mentions and the wider gateway can be realised.

Budget Resolutions

Matt Warman Excerpts
Monday 1st November 2021

(2 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Matt Warman Portrait Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
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This is the first time that I have spoken from the Back Benches in a while and the first time that I have spoken at all in this place since the reshuffle, so I have a new perspective on the Dispatch Box: it is rhetorically the easiest place to speak from in this place, but intellectually and emotionally, it is so much the hardest. I hope that it is not too glib to recognise the responsibility that Ministers bear and to say thank you, and I hope that my gratitude makes up for now pestering them so frequently and shamelessly in the voting Lobby.

The second hardest place to speak from is the Government Back Benches, because we do not have the luxury of standing up and making empty speeches and claiming that everything would be better if a different party were in power. I hope that the three things that I have to say about the Budget are heard in the constructive spirit in which they are meant.

First, it is right, as the Chancellor said, that the Conservative plan is working: unemployment is down, employment is up, growth is up, wages are up, and we are tackling the tax on work that is the taper rate and addressing the cost of living by scrapping fuel duty rises. Those are all great things, but perhaps most importantly, the Chancellor has levelled with people. I believe, in both hope and expectation, that he and the Prime Minister are low-tax Conservatives. In an age when political rhetoric has too often been a way to veil talking about the hardest choices we have to make, the Chancellor has more than justified today’s tax rates while spelling out the path to lower ones in the future.

We say glibly sometimes that to govern is to choose, but these are life-and-death decisions, and I praise the Chancellor’s honesty in saying why taxes are where they are now and laying out a path for where he wants them to fall. If I could choose three values for my kind of Conservatism, they would be: honesty with voters on the impact of policies, a social desire to live and let live; and, of course, the low taxes that come with as small a state as possible. So I support that fiscal approach.

Secondly, I want to talk about levelling up. I would like to see even more money going into research and development, but I thoroughly welcome the huge investment that is already there, particularly in infrastructure. The most consequential impact from levelling up will come from digital infrastructure—from broadband, 4G and 5G. We have just hit the figure of half the country having access to gigabit-capable connections, up from just 9% when the Prime Minister took over.

Andrew Bowie Portrait Andrew Bowie
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I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and to everything that he did to improve the digital infrastructure across the United Kingdom. When does he expect more than half this country to have gigabit fast broadband?

Matt Warman Portrait Matt Warman
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I had a little to do with it, but the truth is that it was the private sector that delivered that growth, and it is the private sector that will get us to about two thirds by the end of this year. Much of that growth is in Scotland; I know that my hon. Friend will take a particular interest in it.

Digital infrastructure, more than any one road or any one railway line, has a huge impact. I will never forget a teacher in Northern Ireland telling me that she had to teach at the pace of the slowest broadband in her class. If we cannot have equality of access to everything from YouTube to the rest of the internet, teachers cannot teach equally; that is what levelling up means.

My third point is about the speed of Government and public services. Ordinarily, tax changes take a while to come in, but the taper rate change in particular is coming much faster. In part, that reflects its urgency, but it also speaks to some broader issues. Whatever we think about its tax bill, Amazon is the pace of life at which many of our constituents now live: deliveries come the following day and supermarket slots are booked for an hour.

Government has to be deliberative—of course it does—but in the pandemic we showed that we can act with real agility. Our democratic pace is sometimes out of step with the pace that our constituents want, so I welcome the huge investment in further digitising the NHS so that digitally booking an appointment might feel a little more like booking for groceries. That does not mean that the availability of appointments has to be identical, but the ease of booking them and the way in which the Government interact with the citizen have to improve.

It has been easy to make those constructive criticisms, because I do not have to implement them, but Ministers do; Back-Bench MPs of the governing party are on the hook for delivering them, too. This has been a Budget that gets things done: it will fund better roads in my constituency, whether that is through the levelling-up fund or through the towns fund, and it will tackle the climate emergency as we find the path back to 0.7% and invest in some of the countries most affected by climate change. I look forward to the promise of lower taxes stimulating growth and helping around the world

What we say in this place matters. Budget debates, perhaps even more than Opposition day debates, often degenerate into Members on one side saying that everything is terrible and Members on the other saying that everything is perfect. Voters understand the immensely difficult choices that the Government face; I think perhaps we could sometimes level up the standard of debate in this place by acknowledging that.